單亞語
Danayo is an w:international auxiliary languagehttp://conlangery.com/2013/01/14/conlangery-80-zonal-auxlangs/, intended to be quickly learnable, readily comprehensible, and mutually communicative between persons of the w:East Asian cultural sphere. It uses w:Chinese characters for all of its native writing, with some forms being simplified according to w:Shinjitai, the kanji standard of Japan. w:Hangul -- the alphabet of Korea -- is used for foreign sounds or phonetic spelling. It does not have tones, is mostly isolating, SVO, topic-prominent, uses classifiers, is pro-drop, and uses postpositions. It is meant to be spoken throughout w:East Asia: in w:China, w:Japan, w:Korea, w:Vietnam, and even w:Mongolia. Phonology Danayo has 5 vowels and 12 consonants. Immediately upon seeking a common ground across East Asia, one encounters a great deal of diversity. Japanese is definitely the outlier, with the most restrictive sound inventory of all. Only Japanese does not contrast aspirated and unaspirated stopshttp://wals.info/feature/4A#4/28.77/115.93, instead opting for the more European-sounding voicing contrasthttp://wals.info/feature/5A#4/25.40/121.38. Aspiration-contrast is difficult for Japanese-speakers to learnhttp://www.conforg.fr/acoustics2008/cdrom/data/fa2005-budapest/paper/505-1.pdf. The operating principle for our sound selection is, no other sounds than Japanese has, but including Japanese allophones. : † j''' may be pronounced /z/ : ‡ '''g may be pronounced /ɣ/ w:Vowels are also difficult to achieve consensus on. Mandarin and Japanese have the most limited systemshttp://wals.info/feature/2A#4/24.37/120.06. The world's most common and usable system -- with five, cardinal vowels -- was chosen for maximum compatibility, and some combinations are excluded (see below). Again, much allophony will occur and much tolerance will be needed between parties. There are two ways to write /u/, but only one (우) is used in native transcription. The other (으) is used in transliteration, to break up consonant clusters. It is whatever epenthetic vowel is common for the speaker. Japanese will realize these as /ɯᵝ/, Koreans as /ɯ/, Mandarin-speakers as /ɨ/, Cantonese as /ʊ̈/, and Vietnamese as /ə̆/. : * The central vowel is nearly completely unspecified an only used in transcribing foreign sounds. Because tone is not present in all languageshttp://wals.info/feature/13A#4/25.72/126.39 and learning tone is extremely prohibitive, tone is not phonemic in Danayo, and prosody is not specified. Sentence Final Particles (SFPs) are mandatory to indicate any modality other than simple, declarative sentences. Phonotactics Across the region, there is no clear majority position on syllable structure. WALS misleadingly labels all our languages as "moderately complex"http://wals.info/feature/12A#4/25.80/112.06. Japanese is not even organized around the syllable, but the mora. Because the common core across the region is the Chinese character, that is the basic organizing principle, not the syllable. That being said, there are some simple principles in the phonetic system. A syllable may start with any sounds except /ŋ/ (Japanese /ɴ/)http://wals.info/feature/9A#3/25.80/130.61. It is possible for many of the region to pronounce each hanji as one syllable, but that is not required. At maximum efficiency, as syllable would have one of ten onsets (include null), one of three on-glides (including null), one of the five cardinal vowels, and one of nine finals (including off-glides and null). Hence, someone with the most trouble, speaking one of the most complicated hanji sounds, could end up saying as many as three syllables, which could be transliterated with as many as four Japanese kana. Part of learning this language is learning how other Asians pronounce things and learning tolerance. Writing Danayo recognizes that while Chinese characters may be common in Japan and China, they are less so in Korea and absent from Vietnamese popular education. Therefore, the total number of logograms in use is kept to under 2000, indeed as close to the Korean list of 1800 learned in school as possible. Pronunciations are regularly derived from Middle Chinese, and then adapted to a consensus position between Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese, but also altered to reduce homophony. The form of Chinese characters have changed in the last century, with the development of Simplified Characters in Mainland China. However, these are not taught in Korea and elsewhere. Therefore, a medial position has been chosen, that of Shinjitai. Because Chinese characters do not contain enough phonetic information, and because transcribing sounds is also needed, a phonetic alphabet is also needed. Katakana is useful, but is not helpful in spelling foreign words, and not compact. The Latin alphabet is not indigenous enough. Hangul was chosen because it required the least modification. Whenever possible, in order to facilitate learning by newcomers, Hangul should be written as Ruby, like this: . Only words which are not Danayo should be written as Hangul alone: 도오쿄 (Japanese). Transliteration of foreign sounds is bound by Danayo phonotactics, not Korean. The Danayo system of Hangul is slightly different from standard Korean. Some syllables may be written with one of two diacritical marks. Syllables may end in non-Korean off-glides, which have to be written as as ̩ (\0329) or ̞ (\031E). When these special characters are unavailable, the simple Korean vowels ㅣ (\3163), ㅜ (\315C) may follow the text. As a last resort, a Latin capital 'T' and a "pipe" may be used. Derivation Syntax Danayo is has a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order. The languages of Asian are split SVO/SOVhttp://wals.info/feature/81A#4/27.29/130.08 but because SOV requires making the nominative and accusative, SVO was chosen. Adverbial phrases and oblique arguments must precede the verbhttp://wals.info/feature/84A#4/25.80/126.04. The language uses postpositions, genitives precede their noun, as do adjectives, numerals, and relative clauses. Danayo is a topic-prominent language, featuring pro-drop, wh-word in situ, and copula-drop. Nouns Regarding elephants, airplanes use gasoline. Unlike English, most of the languages of Asia are verb-centric. This can be discerned by the fact that adjectives are stative verbs, not substantive nouns. In all the languages of our region, nouns are not marked for number, gender, or case. Word order determines a great deal of meaning. Topics must come first in the sentence and be marked with the postposition . The subject may be dropped. Postpositional phrases must come before the verb. Objects must come after the verb. Topics serve a variety of grammatical roles, but one of the most important is possession, which is indicated by POSSESSOR-topic POSSESSEE exist. The Noun Phrase The noun phrase consists of an optional determiner ( , , or ), any adjectival phrases, the noun itself, an optional honorific suffix ( ), an optional plural suffix (simple or associative), and an optional classifier phrase. Pronouns The most polite thing to do is drop the pronoun. This is humble if you are speak about yourself, and it is middle-ground for speaking to another. To be polite, use the person's title. Using their name or "you" is much more intimate. Verbs Verb phrases consist of an optional negative particle , any number of simple verbs for serialization, the one (or only) head verb, with optional honorific marker ( ), and aspect marker (ø for imperfective, for perfective, for historic past, or for irrealis). Sentence Final Particles Every utterance other than simple, declarative sentences must end in a sentence final particle. References